Lockdowns

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@everydayupsanddowns Mike this is really interesting. Clarfies the difference between opinion (which we are all entitlted to), misinformation and disinformation.

It can now be revealed that the CDI unit ignored official Cabinet Office guidance created for civil servants and communications professionals when it classified legitimate opinions as disinformation.

A manual titled ‘Resist 2: Countering Disinformation Toolkit’ was produced by the Government Communication Service in 2021 and is intended as an aid for civil servants and communications professionals to identify misinformation – false information that is inadvertently spread – and disinformation – false information that is spread deliberately.

In a section that seeks to explain how to spot disinformation, readers are warned that opinions should not be considered as such.

Despite this instruction, it appears that social media posts where people expressed concerns about government Covid policies were monitored by the secretive unit.

The manual states: “The most common way to first notice mis- and disinformation is when you encounter messages that draw your attention and raise concerns.

“A message is a form of communication aimed at a group of recipients. It may for example take the form of a social media post, tweet, meme, or comment, or a letter, flyer, poster, or slogan.

“Is the message an opinion? Opinions are usually subjective, which means that they cannot be verifiably false. If the message is simply a statement of opinion, you should not treat it as disinformation.

“However, if the opinion is based on verifiably false, deceptive, or manipulated information that has the potential to cause harm, it may be worth investigating further.”

Molly Kingsley, a former lawyer and journalist who founded the children’s campaign group UsForThem, was one of the people who posted opinions critical of government policy and later discovered some of her posts were collected in reports sent to the CDU.

www.telegraph.co.uk

Secretive government Covid unit broke own rules by flagging opinions as disinformation

The CDU ignored the official Cabinet Office guidance created for civil servants and communications professionals
www.telegraph.co.uk www.telegraph.co.uk
 
I have had Covid 5 times if I count the ever so like Covid illness I had at the end of the year before it all kicked off.
At least 2 of those infections were from handling plastic covered packages sent through the post during lockdowns. I have not had any further infections since I started to sanitise packaging and hands after shopping.
Wearing a mask seemed to be ineffective both to prevent infection and infecting others.
 
Amity Island said:
I'm saying, look at the graphs
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Each time you post these same graphs people make some observations. You don’t ever seem to comment on or acknowledge the ideas of ‘covid lag’ (the delay between infection, illness developing, serious illness developinng, and tragically death occuring), and of the nature of exponential increases - where nothing appears to be happening, but people who are watching can see the ‘uptick’ and the sudden explosion in cases (and subsequent risk to a stretched health service).

Do you believe these were factors in how the pandemic unfolded? Might they suggest that lockdowns should have taken place earlier (as in other places), but been shorter? Was it too little, too late, and too long?

You are absolutely right, of course, to say that lockdowns were not without challenges and risks in themselves. And there are legitimate questions being asked about the balance of risks and what happened in other countries with the benefit of hindsight.

Of course the decisions were being taken without those data to inform them - because they were still being collected at the time.

It will be interesting to see what lessons (if any!) are taken from Covid the next time there is an international health emergency.
 
everydayupsanddowns said:
Each time you post these same graphs people make some observations. You don’t ever seem to comment on or acknowledge the ideas of ‘covid lag’ (the delay between infection, illness developing, serious illness developinng, and tragically death occuring).
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That's because I'm not talking about covid.

I'm talking about NON covid deaths as a result of lockdowns and all the other measures taken around 23rd March 2020. Look at the graphs for NON covid deaths in carehomes and peoples own homes. Nearly all NON covid excess deaths in peoples homes and 50 percent NON covid deaths in carehomes.

The covid public inquiry begins in ernest this week and will likely drag on for years. The witnesses / relatives for care home deaths are not due to appear at the inquiry until spring 2025.
 
everydayupsanddowns said:
It will be interesting to see what lessons (if any!) are taken from Covid the next time there is an international health emergency.
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I suspect the UK is much less able to respond to the next one. The government will be even more reluctant to act quickly (or at all), more of the population will believe it's fake and refuse to cooperate, and if there's a vaccine more of the population will refuse to take it. And if the health emergency is some infection that more affects children I think there's a pretty good chance that really high proportions of parents won't want their children to be vaccinated.

I think the antivaxx and related groups (HART, UsForThem, etc.) have been really successful (though fortunately too late to make that much difference, this time) and next time they'll get in much earlier and probably have much more impact.

So I fear that for us (and quite a lot of the world) we've had the opposite experience of those countries strongly hit by SARS1 (which did rather well with SARS2).

But perhaps it depends critically on what kind of health emergency it is. I'm imagining it's most likely to be a pandemic flu, but maybe if it's something quite different we'd do much better (we know that producing vaccines can be done faster than was thought, we know that some things (like recommending physical distancing) can be done).
 
Bruce Stephens said:
I suspect the UK is much less able to respond to the next one. The government will be even more reluctant to act quickly (or at all),
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In terms of the next pandemic, Bill seems to know something about this, smirk, smirk.

See interview near end at 1:47

 
A 2021 fact-checking article covering what it describes at that time as ‘enduring claims’ about lockdowns.

www.bbc.com

Covid lockdown: Seven enduring claims fact-checked - BBC News

A year after the first UK lockdown began, there are many who doubt the necessity of such restrictions.
www.bbc.com www.bbc.com

Interesting that Sweden, 99.x% and the low number of Covid deaths get a mention.

There have been several academic studies in the intervening years which have tried to explore the positive and negative impacts of lockdowns, and try to find the optimum intensity and duration for minimum negative impact and maximum effectiveness.

If we ever face a similar health emergency again, one can only hope that a balanced and pragmatic view is taken.

The current conversation feels rather too visceral and ideologically charged to me.
 
Satan’s little helper said:
I get it. Had a “lecture” at work a year back from somebody suggesting with great authority the vaccine had the “AIDS virus in the spike proteins?” Luckily, I only saw him once in a while when he had to empty the bins in my area.
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Was he referring to the Australian trials?

 
Amity Island said:
Was he referring to the Australian trials?

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The timescale when this video posted is later..

He seemed to be mixing up a Kary Mullis lecture on PCR testing doing the rounds? But on further inspection. It was actually a lecture on HIV testing filmed on VHS in the 1990s even the clothing represented that era. (“Grunge.”)
The speech was taken out of context from that. in fact I discovered he’d died in August 2019. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kary_Mullis

And further more his long term partner had dumped him due to too much time in the lab. Further research looked like he got a bonus pay for 10k? But didn’t retain any copyrite on his IP.?
So, (just my opinion.) the original “lecture” could have had sour “roots.”
 
Moderator note: Tangential lockdown posts, in thread about food industry ( https://forum.diabetes.org.uk/board...-killing-you-by-dr-dhand.106895/#post-1270694 ) merged with existing lockdown thread

everydayupsanddowns said:
YouTube has been under fire from fact-checking organisations who say that not enough is done to prevent the spreading of false and untrue claims. I would imagine that if something is demonstrably untrue and false, it doesn’t matter whether you share it as fact or opinion - it would still be misleading?

I’m not sure what connections lockdowns have to any of this?
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Hi Mike,

So what happens to opinion? Do you not want a "second" opinion from your healthcare team or do we fact check every doctors opinion? Health advice can often be more to the individual not the collective, as you know (being a type 1 like myself). Do we put everyone on the same insulin, same dose, same timings etc We seem to be heading down a one truth path, a one source of information.

btw the connection to lockdown was that it was only until after this, that they went on a huge deletion and account closing campaign against what used to be called opinion (particularly against anyone with any credibility or medical or scientific training) re-coined misinformation. Exactly the same happened with opinions in all other parts of our lives. Opinion, even if truthful was re-coined "conspiracy theory". We've been told for years the moon is outside of the earths atmosphere, when in fact it is in the earths atmosphere, which as far as I understand, means man has never been into outer space (the moon in the earths atmosphere).

Here, as other parts of the world, we were told to dismiss ALL other sources of information, opinion, truth. We should all listen to one source of truth.

Mike, can there really be only one source of truth or advice? What happens to opinions?

 
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everydayupsanddowns said:
YouTube has been under fire from fact-checking organisations who say that not enough is done to prevent the spreading of false and untrue claims.
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Mike, what would you call having a party whilst telling others to lockdown, stay at home, don't meet with others, don't attend funerals, weddings, don't see loved ones in care-homes, hospitals. Is this misinformation?

Can we really rely on this single source of truth?

 
Amity Island said:
Mike, what would you call having a party whilst telling others to lockdown, stay at home, don't meet with others, don't attend funerals, weddings, don't see loved ones in care-homes, hospitals. Is this misinformation?
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I don’t recognise that behaviour as misinformation. They tried to cover it up, and fought to stop information about their actions being made public.

It feels much more like a failure of leadership, a sense of entitlement, arrogance, and a callous disregard for those they should have been serving. Just my opinion, of course.
 
everydayupsanddowns said:
I don’t recognise that behaviour as misinformation. They tried to cover it up, and fought to stop information about their actions being made public.
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Of course they did (tried to cover it up). They can't be seen to be doing the very opposite of what they are telling everyone else publically.

What I'm saying is, they clearly thought the risks were far lower than what they advised the public, hence misinforming the public, scaring the pants off them.
 
Amity Island said:
What I'm saying is, they clearly thought the risks were far lower than what they advised the public
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I think that may be the case for some of them, but I don't think it's required for their actions.

I think they believed (I think plausibly) that working for long hours in the relatively crowded buildings of government meant that worrying about wine Fridays (and all the rest) would be rather silly. And generally you're probably right that they weren't too worried about personal risk (there was this sense that everyone's going to get infected at some point), they were worried about numbers: if too many people get sick at the same time it won't be possible to care for them.

So a few hundred idiots in No 10 messing around isn't going to threaten the healthcare system, but having half the country (or half of London) do it would.

(Even accepting all that, I think it would have made sense to split the staff to try to reduce the chances of too many getting ill at the same time, but perhaps they considered doing that and decided against it for some plausible reason.)
 
Bruce Stephens said:
I think that may be the case for some of them, but I don't think it's required for their actions.

I think they believed (I think plausibly) that working for long hours in the relatively crowded buildings of government meant that worrying about wine Fridays (and all the rest) would be rather silly. And generally you're probably right that they weren't too worried about personal risk (there was this sense that everyone's going to get infected at some point), they were worried about numbers: if too many people get sick at the same time it won't be possible to care for them.

So a few hundred idiots in No 10 messing around isn't going to threaten the healthcare system, but having half the country (or half of London) do it would.

(Even accepting all that, I think it would have made sense to split the staff to try to reduce the chances of too many getting ill at the same time, but perhaps they considered doing that and decided against it for some plausible reason.)
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Then we clearly have a different view on it.

I think, if you believe the risk of something is so minimal that you can enjoy a good knees up, but then scare the pants off the public with fear, this is misinforming the public of the actual risk. Lockdowns as you say, were apparently to reduce patient numbers in hospitals etc. (yet, thousands died as result at the beginning from unlawfully throwing the elderly out of hospital to make room, beds which were never used anyway as the hospitals laid largely empty as a result of telling everyone to stay at home away from hospital).

In the leaked wastap messages, it's quite clear what the strategy was to justify lockdowns. It was fear.

Mr Hancock says: "We frighten the pants of everyone with the new strain."
The adviser responds: "Yep, that's what will get proper behaviour change."
The minister then asks: "When do we deploy the new variant."
Mr Hancock announced the new variant the following day.

www.bbc.co.uk

Matt Hancock: Leaked messages suggest plan to frighten public

The former health secretary discussed when to reveal the existence of the Kent variant.
www.bbc.co.uk
 
Amity Island said:
beds which were never used anyway as the hospitals laid largely empty as a result of telling everyone to stay at home away from hospital
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Because there was high staff sickness, and looking after the people who had to be looked after required more staff per patient than is usual. "Bed" isn't a good metric, you want "staffed bed". That's why idiots were able to go into hospitals and photograph empty wards: the staff were helping to look after patients elsewhere.
 
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